The Homicide Department

At exactly 5:03, Detective Merve Pereira was sitting at the Big Tiki Torch trying to get a head start on putting a dent in his sober state of mind.

The Big Tiki Torch was a bar located next door to the Pennington Fire House. It was small and dark and decorated with tiki torches and other refinements that created an ambiance you might find at a shore bar or on an island, assuming the island had recently gone bankrupt and been abandoned by everyone except several angry fishermen.

The decorations were old, and whatever passion had created the beachy atmosphere had retired long ago. The stools were beaten up, the fake bamboo had split, and the place looked as if it had once been kind and friendly but made a wrong turn and fell in with the wrong crowd.

The bartender, Sarah, was as worn out looking as the bar itself. She wore frayed jean shorts, a faded blue polo shirt, and her dirty-blonde hair in a hemp knot while searching beneath the bar for a Sol. Scrappy had headed there right after leaving the station, where his chief had spent the afternoon taking long walks past his desk and shooting him sympathetic looks. Not the kind one gives a man who has lost a loved one. These were the sort of looks that said it was going to be very difficult for that fellow not to become homeless after his worthless ass was fired.

“Start a tab, please,” Scrappy said.

His name was Merve Pereira, but everyone called him Scrappy. His parents had created Merve by combining the names of his grandfathers, Ervin and Melvin, after neither would concede. Even his name sounded like something two people had fought over until neither wanted it.

Scrappy had gone into police work after seeing Police Academy 6: City Under Siege during his senior year in Indiana and deciding he wanted to become a homicide detective in a big city. Ten years later, he sent his résumé across the country and was rejected by every department except Trenton. When you were from Indiana, Trenton seemed like a big city. He moved east and spent two years on traffic patrol making sure no one entered town faster than twenty-five miles an hour.

Eventually, he became head homicide detective in Pennington, which had not experienced a homicide in more than forty years. The job was like being a butcher in a vegetarian restaurant. Scrappy investigated broken windows, stolen bicycles, and one coffeehouse fight ending with a teenager’s chest scalded by hot mocha. He attacked that case like Matlock. The other officers never let him forget it.

Unfortunately, forgetting was not one of Scrappy’s talents. As a child, he cleaned up at Memory until his cousins stopped playing. As an adult, he recalled conversations word for word, including the small corrections people made after saying too much. It was useful for police work and miserable everywhere else. He remembered every rejection, every laugh, and every word his chief had said that morning.

“Merve, I need to know what exactly you do here.”

“I investigate homicides.”

“We haven’t had one in forty-three years.”

“I can’t control the murder rate.”

“No, but I can control payroll. The Town is up in arms about our budget.”

Scrappy finished his Sol.

“Sarah, could I please have a Dewar’s?”

She placed a glass with ice on the counter. “Make it a double?”

“Yes, please.”

“This one’s on the house. Same shit?”

“Same shit.”

Scrappy swallowed half of it. “Today was one of those days where you wish you could take a picture showing how useless your life has become and send it backward in time as a warning. Do not become a homicide detective in Pennington.”

Then an obnoxious sound began emanating from his hip.

“My phone,” he said. “I’m on call.”

He laughed as he answered and made every effort to sound composed.

“Detective Pereira.”

“Scrappy!” Chief Roach said. “We need you at 1020 Terrace Boulevard. Professor Aaron Levy. It’s a homicide.”

Scrappy covered the receiver and whispered to Sarah, “Oh my God. This is fantastic. Someone’s been killed!”

Sarah stared at him.

Scrappy uncovered the phone. “That’s terrible. What happened?”

“His daughter found him stabbed in his den. Two FBI agents are already there.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Scrappy heard the chief cover the receiver.

“He says ten minutes,” Roach told someone. “Expect an hour.”

Scrappy finished the Scotch and tried to stand. It had only just occurred to him that he was well into a strong buzz and had better pull himself together before reaching the first homicide scene of his career. Sarah offered him gum. Scrappy accepted it, straightened his tie, and stumbled into the parking lot with the broad smile of a man who had just received the opportunity of a lifetime, but wasn’t sure if he was up to the task.

He backed his rusted Chevy Nova into the curb, checked the rear tire, and drove toward Terrace Boulevard laughing all the way.

***

The house was blue, two stories, and too clean to have a corpse inside it. Scrappy pulled into the driveway and blocked in two black government vehicles, then studied his reflection in the car window and attempted to get into character.

He was the head of homicide. He would call the shots. He repeated this several times because repetition sometimes transformed an obvious lie into something one could say with confidence.

Professor Levy’s daughter opened the door before he knocked. Sonia Levy was in her mid-thirties, with dark hair pulled back and the exhausted expression of someone who life had a grudge against. Scrappy knew her from the Pennington Post, where she exposed enough corruption that half the town admired her and the other half checked the parking lot before speaking.

“Detective Pereira?”

“Listen, lady, I’m the head of homicide and I’ll be calling the shots.”

Sonia looked at him.

Scrappy cleared his throat. “Where is the body?”

“My father is in the den.”

“Excellent.”

Her expression changed.

“Not excellent that your father is dead. Excellent that you answered the question.”

Two men waited in the living room beside several Trenton officers. Both were tall and well-built and looked as if the federal government had ordered the same agent in two different hair colors. The dark-haired one introduced himself as Kevin Brock. His partner, Tom Sanders, was dirty-blond and had the patient expression of a man who spent considerable time apologizing for Kevin.

“We were scheduled to meet Professor Levy at five,” Tom said. “Economic espionage. Suspected theft of federally funded semiconductor research.”

Kevin looked at Scrappy’s tie and the gum moving inside his cheek. “What brings you?”

“I am the homicide department.”

The words did not come out as powerfully as Scrappy intended.

Sonia led them into the den. Professor Levy lay beside a heavy oak desk, his white shirt soaked red from the waist up. There were so many wounds that the body looked less stabbed than painted, and his skin had gone the color of a China doll. Framed photographs showed Levy accepting awards from men happier to be photographed with him than he was to receive them.

Kevin crouched beside the body.

“Woo-wee. What have we here?”

“Don’t touch anything,” Tom said.

“I’m looking.”

“Look from farther away.”

Kevin lit a cigarette.

Scrappy pointed at him. “At least I’m not the asshole smoking over the evidence.”

Kevin dropped it into an empty coffee cup. Scrappy crouched beside the professor. Most of the wounds were wide and ragged, but one beneath the left arm appeared narrow and clean. Two wider cuts crossed near the shoulder at angles that did not fit one uncontrolled attack.

“The killer used a couple of knives,” Kevin said.

“Impossible,” Scrappy replied.

“The cuts range from one to four inches.”

“He wouldn’t carry a bunch of knives.”

“So, what are you saying?”

Scrappy pointed with a metal pen. “This body was attacked in more than one way.”

“Several killers?”

“Maybe.”

Kevin laughed. The Trenton officers joined him, partly because Scrappy smelled like a bar and partly because no one wanted to be the last person to recognize that a joke had been made.

Scrappy continued circling the body.

He remembered every laugh.

***

Sonia sat at the kitchen table with iced tea she had not touched. Scrappy sat across from her without a notebook, which caused Kevin to assume he was unprepared and Sonia to assume he was not listening. Both assumptions made them comfortable.

“What was your father working on?” Scrappy asked.

“He called it Project Green Light.”

Sonia explained that the project was based on photosynthesis. Plants could transfer absorbed sunlight across several molecular pathways and reach a reaction center before any energy was lost. Her father had made a semiconductor do something similar, moving energy through several paths instead of wasting power as heat.

“How important was it?”

“The prototype performed almost one hundred times more artificial-intelligence computation using the same electricity.”

Even Scrappy understood one hundred times.

Tom explained that Levy’s laboratory received federal grants through Aurelius Microsystems, a defense and semiconductor company. Levy had contacted the FBI three days earlier and claimed Aurelius falsified grant reports, removed his name from the patents, and planned to transfer the technology overseas through shell companies.

Sonia unlocked her phone. “My father left me a message at 3:08 pm.”

Professor Levy’s voice emerged through the speaker.

“Sonia, bring your recorder. I need you to do what you do best. I know what I did to Lena Ortiz. I told myself I was protecting the laboratory. Now they are doing the same thing to me. Someone’s here. I’ll call you after—”

The recording ended.

“Who is Lena Ortiz?” Scrappy asked.

“My father’s former doctoral student.”

“And what did he do to her?”

Sonia looked toward the den. “He stole Project Green Light.”

Fifteen years earlier, Lena Ortiz discovered the principle on which Green Light was built. Aurelius told Levy her work was preliminary, the laboratory would lose funding if he complicated the patent, and national security was more important.

Lena received no credit. Levy received awards and his employer got the patents.

“Why confess now?” Scrappy asked.

“Because Aurelius was doing the same thing to him,” Sonia said. “My father only found his conscience after he began to question the ethics of the whole project.”

A hard pounding sounded at the door.

***

Dr. Lena Ortiz was thin, sharp-faced, and dressed in black despite the summer heat. When Kevin told her Levy was dead, she stopped fighting the officer at the door and stood motionless.

“Aaron called me this morning. He said Aurelius intended to steal the processor and sell the manufacturing rights overseas.”

Kevin began approaching her as if she was his key to booking a return flight and leaving Pennington.

“You threatened him.”

“I threatened to expose him.”

“You sent a message saying, ‘I know what you did.’”

“I did know.”

“You hated him.”

“For fifteen years.”

“And now he has been stabbed thirteen times.”

Lena looked at him with the calm hostility of a woman who had spent years imagining confrontations and would have been proud to be the killer.

“I wanted him alive long enough to confess.”

Levy had promised to restore her name and give her the evidence against Aurelius. After years trying to destroy his reputation, Lena had been offered the chance to watch him destroy it himself.

At 8:06, Dr. Michael Voss arrived carrying an umbrella, an expensive leather sample case, and the solicitous air of a first-class maître d’. Aurelius’s chief scientist embraced Sonia before she could decide whether she wanted to embrace him or stab him in the heart, then turned to Scrappy.

“Detective Pereira, Aurelius will provide anything you need. Whatever helps find Aaron’s killer.”

Scrappy liked him immediately, which was one of the first things that made him suspicious. People rarely treated Scrappy with respect unless they wanted something or had badly misunderstood who he was.

Voss noticed Lena in the doorway.

“You,” she said.

“This is not the time.”

“It is exactly the time.”

Voss set the sample case on the counter and explained that Levy had become unstable, convinced the company intended to steal his work. Lena had aggravated his fears with threats of litigation and humiliation.

“Aaron believed she would do anything to recover the green prototype,” Voss said.

Scrappy looked at him. “What green prototype?”

Voss paused. “The Green Light wafer.”

“No one said a prototype was missing.”

Sonia stood and hurried into the den.

“I assumed,” Voss said.

The medical examiner called from the other room. Twelve wounds came from a broad kitchen knife. One narrow wound beneath Levy’s arm pierced his heart.

“The narrow wound came first,” she said. “The others were inflicted after circulation had nearly stopped.”

Kevin frowned. “Meaning?”

“He was already dead,” Scrappy said.

The examiner nodded. “Or close to it.”

Scrappy looked toward the kitchen. “Two knives. Two different stories.”

No one laughed.

Sonia returned. “The prototype is gone.”

Voss shook his head. “Lena threatened to stab him a dozen times if he did not restore her name.”

“I said I would destroy him,” Lena replied.

“You were here this afternoon.”

“So were you.”

“No. I had not seen Aaron since our morning meeting.”

“How did you hear about the murder?” Scrappy asked.

“Sonia called me.”

“I did not,” Sonia said.

Voss’s expression changed only slightly. “Someone from the company must have notified me.”

Scrappy pointed toward the leather case. “Open it.”

Inside were diagrams, a second green wafer beneath glass, and a row of white ceramic tools used for cutting semiconductor samples. One slot was empty.

“What goes there?” Scrappy asked.

“A wafer knife.”

“How large?”

“Three inches.”

The Scotch still soaked Scrappy’s brain, keeping the nerves warm, but every statement remained exactly where it had been placed.

Michael is here early.

I had not seen Aaron since this morning.

Sonia called me.

I did not.

The green prototype.

No one had said it was green.

A dozen times.

Twelve broad wounds.

Most people believed memory meant preserving facts. Scrappy knew the important thing was remembering what people said before they knew what they would later need to explain.

“You were here this afternoon,” he said.

“No, Detective.”

“Professor Levy said Michael came early. You said you hadn’t seen him since morning. You said Sonia called you, but she told me she called 911, her editor, and her brother. You were not one of them.”

“I was mistaken.”

“You asked whether Lena took the green prototype before anyone said a prototype was missing or green. You said she threatened to stab him a dozen times before the doctor counted twelve wounds.”

“That is an expression.”

Scrappy pointed toward the empty slot. “And your knife is gone.”

Voss turned to Tom and Kevin. “This man arrived intoxicated. He has taken no notes. Are you seriously going to permit this?”

Scrappy nodded. “That’s why you kept talking.”

Voss had arrived before Sonia. When Levy threatened to expose the theft and restore Lena’s name, Voss killed him with the wafer knife, then used a kitchen knife after his heart stopped to make the murder look angry and personal. He searched for the prototype, locked the den, and returned later pretending to assist.

“You cannot prove that,” Voss said.

“The professor’s blood will probably be inside the empty slot.”

Voss looked down at the case.

Kevin moved behind him.

“You do not understand what Levy intended to do,” Voss said. “He was going to bury Green Light in litigation for ten years. This technology changes artificial intelligence, national defense, energy consumption. Other countries are already ahead.”

Tom took his arm. “Aurelius was transferring it to a foreign-backed company in which you owned twelve percent through a trust.”

Voss stopped resisting, gathering the final arguments he had used to convince himself.

“Thousands of jobs depended on that patent. Aaron was prepared to destroy the program because he suddenly discovered a conscience.”

Scrappy remembered Levy’s message.

I told myself I was protecting the laboratory.

“You all have reasons,” Scrappy said.

“You think this was about money?”

“That is one of them.”

“You have no idea what was at stake.”

“Maybe not. But Professor Levy had a reason when he took the idea from Lena. You had a reason when you killed him. Everybody has a reason after.”

Kevin placed Voss in handcuffs.

Lena remained beside the counter as the agents led him away. Sonia stood across from her.

“My father was going to restore your name,” Sonia said.

“He should have done it fifteen years ago.”

“Yes.”

Neither woman seemed satisfied. Scrappy supposed that was one of the problems with truth. People expected it to arrive carrying justice and closure. Most of the time it simply showed up late and explained why everyone had been miserable.

***

It was after midnight when Scrappy returned to the Big Tiki Torch. Sarah was cleaning the counter.

“How was the murder?”

“I solved it.”

She laughed, then saw his face and stopped. She reached beneath the bar for the Dewar’s.

“Double?”

Scrappy remembered Chief Roach asking what exactly he did at the police department. He remembered the officers laughing when he said there were two knives. He remembered Voss saying no one would believe an intoxicated detective without notes.

He remembered everything.

“Coffee,” Scrappy said.

Sarah stared at him.

“Black.”

She put the Dewar’s away and poured coffee. Scrappy sat staring at the trucks in the Fire House. It was not the big city, and it was not the career he had imagined when he was seventeen and sitting in an Indiana theater watching City Under Siege.

It was Pennington, indefinitely.

For the first time, that did not sound entirely hopeless.